They’ve asked one another how far they would go to finally get someone to listen.

They have laughed about how they would walk into the state Capitol in Sacramento carrying bags of poisoned Mexican candy. How they would stand in front of the Legislature and – whoosh. The dresses would hit the floor. They’re that frustrated.

These 10 community activists, or promotoras, are tired of losing their battle to protect the children of California from the toxic treats the state government usually ignores, treats that the Mexican government says are too difficult to regulate.

Last summer, the women from the San Diego-based Environmental Health Coalition were the principal supporters of legislation that promised sweeping changes to the state’s lead-prevention program – a $1.2 million expansion that would increase candy testing, establish clear procedures for issuing health advisories and make lead levels available to parents and health-care workers.

But the promotoras got a hard lesson in Sacramento politics.

U.S. candy industry lobbyists tried to convince lawmakers that the federal government was taking care of lead in candy – even though the federal government had no such plans. The lawmakers, facing a massive state budget deficit, chose to believe it.

And the state’s lead-prevention branch – with its primary mission of protecting children from the dangers of lead – didn’t testify at all. The agency’s silence bothered the promotoras the most.

The leader of the promotoras, 31-year-old Leticia Ayala, started the fight to change the law with little more than hope. Today, she still has it.

But what happened in between has tested her resolve, her wits and her belief that government can make a difference.

AN ACTIVIST’S FIGHT

Ayala is not married and doesn’t have children, but she’s as passionate as any mom when it comes to keeping lead away from kids.

She started with the coalition in 1993 as an office manager, working her way up to the position she currently holds, director of the Campaign to Eliminate Childhood Lead Poisoning. The coalition is a nonprofit group that tries to engage the San Diego community on environmental issues like the protection of wetlands, the banning of toxic pesticides and the eradication of lead.

For more than three years, Ayala has been trying to force-feed the dangers of lead in candy to anyone who will listen.

In 2001, a health advisory about a Costa Mesa boy sparked Ayala into activism.

The boy had a dangerously high blood-lead level. When investigators tried to figure out why, the usual suspects – house paint, contaminated soil, antiquated pipes – were nowhere to be found. What they discovered was Bolirindo, a popular chili-flavored tamarind candy.

The state immediately issued the advisory and ordered Bolirindo pulled from store shelves.

If Bolirindo were tainted, Ayala thought, what other candies also were dangerous?

She remembers calling the state Department of Health Services to ask about the potential for finding lead in other candies.

What she didn’t know at the time was this: The state had been tracking lead in Mexican candy since 1993. The Orange County Register found records of about 1,500 tests showing one in four candies were higher than the state’s danger level for lead.

State guidelines set the “level of concern” at 0.2 parts per million lead. A child who eats 0.2 ppm in a standard piece of candy would be exposed to 6 micrograms of lead, which the state says is dangerous.

Ayala decided to begin tracking candy herself.

During national Lead Poisoning Prevention Week in October 2001, Ayala and her group went to the dulcerias along San Diego’s Imperial Avenue, a street that would not look out of place in Tijuana.

Ayala and the promotoras sent more than 30 samples of imported candy to the state for testing.

But the state said it needed to do more follow-up testing before it could take any action.

Next, Ayala did two things activists do – she got mad, then she decided to do something about it.

“It’s outrageous,” Ayala said. “It really hits you when you see all the candies on the shelves. It burns you.”

Ayala and her promotoras started a campaign in San Diego to educate store owners, parents – anyone who would listen.

It was the same kind of public education drive that the health department often engineers with brochures, hotline phone numbers and statistics.

But education campaigns often don’t reach much further than the parents who show up for the presentation.

Ayala decided to try to make a bigger change.

She drove south to Chula Vista and marched into the office of Juan Vargas, a state assemblyman.

When Ayala arrived, she met his communications director, Tanya Aldaz, who was eating Chaca Chaca, a salty candy with a history of high lead tests.

Ayala started the meeting by saying that Chaca Chaca had tested high several times for lead.

“Tanya’s eyes got big,” Ayala said.

LAWMAKER’S EYES OPENED

Juan Vargas remembers the oranges.

His family – he was one of 10 children – were so poor growing up in National City near San Diego that at times their only food was the oranges his mother could pick off neighborhood trees.

He also remembers the candy. His favorite was made with tamarind.

“My father loved them too, and he would buy them for me,” Vargas said. “Especially during Christmas, I used to eat those things like they were going out of style. And after Easter, I used to eat those things by the pounds.”

The day Leticia Ayala came into his office was the first time Vargas learned that tamarind candies could be tainted.

He couldn’t believe it.

“It’s like finding out milk has lead in it,” Vargas said.

Vargas’ story is an inspiration. He overcame his family’s poverty and attended the University of San Diego, Fordham University and Harvard University, where he earned a law degree. He spent five years studying to be a priest. He has worked at a hospice with dying patients. He worked with gangs in East Los Angeles. He worked at a homeless shelter in the Bronx.

He won his Assembly seat in 2001, and it wasn’t long before he was up to his suit pockets in candy.

With Ayala’s help, Vargas wrote AB256, the food-safety bill that asked for $1.2 million to allow the prevention branch to do more candy tests.

Convincing lawmakers wasn’t their only hurdle.

DENIAL DOMINATES

It is tough to change a law, but it might be tougher to change a culture.

La Habra parents Violeta and Victor Estrada found out years ago that two of their girls, now ages 11 and 13, had lead poisoning. A health nurse told them about the dangers of Mexican candy.

The Estradas said they still eat it. The 11-year-old, Jessica, listed tamarind candies in clay pots, which have tested high for lead, among her favorites.

“I like them all,” said Jessica, whose blood-lead level tested high 10 times from 1994 to 1998.

Violeta Estrada said she felt ignorant because she hadn’t kept her daughters away from the candy. She also said she is unhappy such candies are so easily available.

Victor Estrada said part of it has to do with lack of information.

“We are poorly educated in this,” he said.

Some people don’t want to stigmatize their culture.

Gloria Bonilla, another La Habra parent, didn’t tell her son, Javier, what poisoned him. She is sure it was the imported, clay-potted candies she bought him daily from the neighborhood candy truck. Not only have the candies tested high for lead, but the pots, with their lead- based glaze, are particularly dangerous.

But Bonilla said she doesn’t want her children to associate negative thoughts with her home country, Mexico.

“I won’t forget who I am or where I’m from, but if (candy) is bad for my kids, I won’t give it to them,” Bonilla said. “I love my country, but I don’t want my kids to get sick.”

Instead, the single mom tries to avoid the candy truck. She takes her children to church, the library or a park after dinner when the truck stops along her street with its distinctive tune that makes her children jump.

Sometimes, despite what she knows, she lets them buy the treats anyway.

“There are times when I can’t avoid it,” she said.

Many Latinos do not believe that a treat they have enjoyed for generations could be harmful.

Lead-poisoned children don’t look sick. But studies have shown that, even at low levels, lead poisoning is associated with decreased intelligence, impaired behavioral development and stunted growth, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Juan Rivas, store manager for Northgate Markets in Buena Park, sells a large array of Mexican candies, which are some of the most popular products in the store.

“I have a lot of nephews; they consume it here, and none of them are retarded,” said Rivas, who loves to eat the sweet and sour candies himself. “We consume them in Mexico. Nothing has ever happened there.”

“It’s not true,” said Santoyo, whose shop, El Cora, joins a cluster of stores and open markets filled with candies, piñatas, fresh fruit and dried chili that draw small business owners and shoppers from Los Angeles and Orange County. “If there was lead, people wouldn’t buy it. Everybody would die in Mexico.”

The heavy-set owner jokes that every time people hear about lead in candy, his business improves.

“They are curious, they want to eat lead, they say lead is good for the blood,” said Santoyo, whose inventory included tamarind in clay pots and other brands that the state has found with high levels of lead. “(Tamarind in clay pots) sells the most. They say, ‘Oh, tamarind with lead, how good is it?'”

BUDGET WOES HURT BILL

Last spring and summer, AB256 zipped through the Legislature.

It passed through the Assembly Health Committee with a 15-6 vote. Passed Appropriations, 18-6. It passed the Assembly floor, 46-27. It passed the Senate’s Health and Human Services Committee, 10-2. The Sierra Club declared its support.

Ayala and Vargas were on a roll. They believed, both said later, that the bill was a slam dunk.

Ayala and Vargas testified before state committees four times. Each time, Ayala brought her plastic bag of lead candies and talked about the health risks associated with eating lead.

She asked someone from the state health department to join her at the microphone. But she was informed that because the department felt the bill was too expensive, no one would be testifying with her.

Each time, she endured the legislators’ attempts at humor. They jokingly chastised her for not bringing enough candy for everyone on the committee to eat.

Ayala didn’t laugh.

Lawmakers voted for the bill. Saving kids from the dangers of lead was a no-brainer, it appeared.

Until the money came up.

In a year when the state faced a $38.2 billion budget deficit, the cost changed everything. The Senate Appropriations Committee estimated the Vargas bill would cost $650,000 to get started and $525,000 per year to run.

The money issue threatened to kill the bill, especially among legislators who had eaten this candy.

“I’ve eaten them during my lunchtime, and I’m still alive,” said Bob Pacheco, R-Walnut. Pacheco, the former vice chairman of the Assembly Health Committee, voted against the bill. “It makes it pretty difficult for me to look at it and say, ‘Well, jeez, they’re pretty bad,’ when I’ve eaten them all my life. I just couldn’t see justification, nor did I see sufficient proof.”

The only other arguments against the bill came from Hershey Foods Corp. lobbyist Dennis Loper, and Kristin Power, a lobbyist for the Grocery Manufacturers of America. Hershey makes much of its chocolate in Mexico. The company also had one of its candies test at the level California regulators consider a safety concern in July 2001, records show.

Loper and Power were brief in their comments about the Vargas bill, speaking for less than a minute.

Both said state legislation was unnecessary because the federal government’s Bioterrorism Act allowed U.S. Food and Drug Administration investigators to stop contaminated candy before it crossed into the United States.

“Ultimately, the FDA has the responsibility of removing (adulterated candies),” Power said.

Without investigation to see if the FDA’s bioterrorism mandate truly included checking candy, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted.

Ayala was in Costa Rica at the time. Although she wanted to be in Sacramento for the outcome, she had scheduled a vacation and couldn’t change the plans.

She gave a friend her e-mail address and told him to contact her as soon as the vote was final.

LEAD GETS OVERLOOKED

The Bioterrorism Act, created in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, pumps money into the FDA to stop terrorists from contaminating the U.S. food supply.

It allows the FDA to hire additional inspectors and testing technicians. It requires foreign companies to register with the FDA. It requires that the companies notify the federal government before shipping foods into this country.

But its main goal is to stop sabotage – not lead in candy.

The Bioterrorism Act ranks the contaminants inspectors are after. Top rankings go to anthrax and botulism, because they are extremely deadly. Secondary rankings go to salmonella and E. coli bacteria, which, to a lesser degree, can cause death and illness.

Lead, which does most of its damage with repeated exposure over time and is mainly a threat to children younger than 6, is listed only as a potential agent that could be used by terrorists in an attack. In reality, experts say, lead isn’t likely to get much attention.

“There is nothing to make us think terrorists are poisoning California’s children with lead,” said Calum Turvey, director of the Food Policy Institute at Rutgers University. “If lead wasn’t being detained prior to the Bioterrorism Act, it won’t be detained now.”

Before the act, the FDA screened about 2 percent of the food coming across the border. How much food is screened now? Two percent. And there is no plan for additional screening of food, said Sue Challis, customs spokeswoman.

Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association and former health secretary of the state of Maryland, was adamant that California legislators made a mistake if they believed the FDA would take care of the problem of lead in candy.

“The state has a responsibility to its citizens first,” Benjamin said. “Don’t rely on the federal government to regulate what comes into your state. The FDA doesn’t have the resources either. The Bioterrorism Act is not going to help. The FDA is looking for anthrax and plague.”

Even when told that leaded candy falls through the holes of the Bioterrorism Act, some lawmakers said food protection is still a federal responsibility.

Assemblyman John Campbell, R-Irvine, said adding new state employees, regulations and reporting guidelines won’t improve the situation.

“Duplication of effort doesn’t help anybody,” Campbell said.

With this bill, the voting ultimately didn’t matter. It was deemed too expensive in the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Even AB256 supporter Sen. Dede Alpert, D-San Diego, said the bill never had a chance because the health department was in such a crisis that it was laying off workers, not adding them.

“How would we have enough employees to do this?” said Alpert, who lives near the border. “As worthy as this is, there are other programs in existence we can’t figure out how to fund.

“It’s sad. You would want there to be a federal solution because this is an international problem. But the border people have enough problems with drugs, weapons and now terrorism. (Candy) will be at the bottom of their priority list.”

THE FIGHT CONTINUES

Leticia Ayala was in an Internet cafe in Costa Rica when she got the e-mail.

It was a description of what had happened to AB256 in the Senate.

She never got past the opening line: “It’s best you don’t read this.”

So, she didn’t.

“I almost cried,” she said.

Vargas had tried to get it passed. He cut the bill drastically, hoping that the reduced spending would salvage some of the testing program. He tried to make it a two-year bill, meaning it could be voted on again the next year when the state’s fiscal picture might be rosier.

Neither tactic worked.

The bill died.

It was stripped of its content, and it became a bill to fund three public works projects in downtown San Diego, including an upgrade of the state government building.

The cost of the public works projects: $472 million in state money.

In the end, AB256 had no mention of candy or lead or danger.

The gutted bill passed. And the only reason it passed, Alpert said, is that the state had to spend no new money to pass it. The bonds to pay for the bill were sold more than a decade ago.

The health department’s Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Branch issued its first statewide candy advisory in May 1993. It has sent seven advisories in 11 years to health offices around the state.

“California has been a pioneer of raising the issue of diverse sources, including candy,” said Dr. Valerie Charlton, the head of the lead-poisoning prevention branch. “We see ourselves as having opened this whole discussion and whole issue. We inform our local programs. We talk about it in articles. We use it in our educational materials.”

The health department is in such a cost-cutting mode, however, that it has asked that three health-care bills that passed last year now be repealed because they are too expensive. The bills would affect Medi-Cal for Native American tribes, stem-cell research and regulations for tissue banks.

‘DO THEY CARE?’

Ayala said the state is indifferent about her Latino community.

“Do they care? … I know what their answer is,” Ayala said.

Vargas took the point a step further, imagining what would happen if there was a threat to a more affluent community.

“One of the things that’s true and sad is poor communities … their issues are seldom heard,” Vargas said. “And if they are, they’re given sort of the back seat to other issues. What if we found out there was a particular type of perfume that was incredibly expensive and being used in Beverly Hills? And if you used it every day for a month, you could endanger your health significantly. A bill that would target that perfume would sail so quickly through the Assembly, Senate and to the governor. There would be a press conference in Beverly Hills within a week. It would be an urgency measure.

“That’s just the truth of the matter, and it’s sad.”

A few miles from the state Capitol in Sacramento, Maria Perez lives with her 4-year-old son, Jesus, whose lead poisoning was linked to Mexican candy. The legislative process has gotten quite frustrating for her.

“They don’t care about Latinos. That is why they haven’t done anything,” Perez said. “How many more children are going to get poisoned before they deal with the issue?”

State officials said that far from ignoring Latinos, the lead program has focused most of its resources on keeping Latino children safe from lead. State officials said about 75 percent of all lead- poisoning victims are Latino and most of those victims live in older housing where lead paint is more prominent. The state’s lead-poisoning prevention branch devotes most of its time to those paint cases.

“That is such the antithesis of everything that we stand for that it surprises me,” said Charlton, the director of the lead-prevention program, responding to charges of racism.

“Everything we address in the program deals with things that would be of concern for lead exposure to children and to Latino children in particular. I would flip the question around to people who might say you’re not addressing candy because it’s a problem with Latinos. Which of the things that we address would they say are not of concern to Latinos?”

The program has a $20 million budget, most of which is passed on to counties to test children, evaluate homes for contamination and educate parents and children about lead threats.

Because the branch wants to ensure that kids are tested regardless of their immigration status, it has a small, separate program that funds testing of low-income children outside the Medi-Cal system. The state also certifies laboratories to perform lead testing to increase the number of places where testing can be performed, particularly in rural and low-income urban areas.

“And we know that the majority of the cases that we get are Hispanic,” Charlton said. “All of our materials are bilingual. We have been working with two Latino groups that have been very active in this area as we develop our strategic plan.”

Money – not racism – is the sole reason for its inaction, the state said.

“Because of the state’s dire financial condition, the department staff did not spend much time on the proposed legislation because there’s no funding to implement it,” spokeswoman Lea Brooks said.

Don’t think Ayala let it die there.

She persuaded Vargas to introduce another bill this year. Vargas and Ayala are working on final language of the new AB2297.

Still, Vargas doesn’t see much hope.

“Everyone’s telling me it’s going to be so hard because we don’t have support,” Vargas said. “It makes it tough.”

He called the battle for AB256 “a good starting point. It’s not the ending point.”

Ayala and her promotoras are even more determined to win this time.

Even if it takes getting naked.

Staff writers William Heisel and Valeria Godines contributed to this report.

Keith Sharon started at the OC Register in 1985. He's covered sports, education, cities, investigations and general assignment stories. He was one of the reporters on the 2005 Pulitzer finalist series "Toxic Treats." The Register has sent him to the Middle East (for a series on life on aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf), China (for the opening of Shanghai Disneyland), New Orleans (in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina) and San Francisco (for the World Series when the Angels beat the Giants). He has written two screenplays that have been made into films: ("Showtime" with Robert DeNiro and Eddie Murphy and "Finding Steve McQueen" with Forest Whitaker and Travis Fimmel). He lives in Trabuco Canyon with his wife Nancy, and three children -- Dylan, Alison and Trey.

Join the Conversation

We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. Although we do not pre-screen comments, we reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.

If you see comments that you find offensive, please use the “Flag as Inappropriate” feature by hovering over the right side of the post, and pulling down on the arrow that appears. Or, contact our editors by emailing moderator@scng.com.